As Above, So Below
by AmethystB
Summary: "Funerals, huh?" Her voice, splintered, finds his attuned senses and he almost loses all sense. [Cooper/Audrey, missing scenes]


**A/N: **This story is a series of vignettes detailing "missing scenes" throughout the show's two seasons. The final two scenes are what I imagine would have happened during a third season. Cooper and Audrey deserve their happiness, thank you very much.

* * *

**As Above, So Below**

* * *

**The Great Northern… **_**"all through the night"**_

Her clothes feel heavy back on her. Too big somehow. Like when she'd taken them off she had shrunk a little. She's still in his bed and he's sitting on the end of it, like before. Not quite facing her but she can see the colour in his cheeks hasn't faded.

The chocolate malt tastes of coffee, or maybe that's her mind playing tricks.

"I dream in black and white," she says importantly, and he turns to face her. "No colour. Isn't that strange?"

"Can't say I've ever heard of it before."

He smiles, really smiles at her and if she hadn't been shrinking she'd have melted.

"Mr Palmer was dancing and crying, I saw him. Would my father grieve like that for me?"

Dale Cooper understands now what drives Audrey Horne: the want to be loved. It's something he can't freely give her and something she can't take from him. He bites into a French fry and lets the salt settle on his tongue as his mind sifts through all he should say.

* * *

**The Bookhouse… **_**"recovery"**_

Audrey's shivering body is hot to the touch. Forehead clammy, dark hair darker with cold sweat. Fever. Withdrawal. If he'd been the vengeful type he'd swear to kill Jean Renault.

Cooper's body is a cradle to her and Audrey still has his hand in hers.

"I'm sorry."

He can barely hear her muffled cry but the overwhelming sadness that comes when he does smothers the fire in him.

"Audrey, you have nothing to be sorry for. _Nothing_."

"I let you down."

She tries to cry but there's nothing left. Cooper squeezes her hand with his.

"You could never let me down."

* * *

**On the Road… **_**"reach"**_

It's a smooth ride for an old car. Engine quiet, tread weightless on rough terrain. The three of them don't talk for half the journey but the silence suffocates the air between them. She wants to scream.

Ben checks his rear mirror. Cooper stares back at him.

"Agent Cooper, I must thank you again. I've been absolutely sick with worry. My little girl means so much to me. Audrey?"

Silence reigns like terror inside her. Her eyes shutter and she turns her head to meet her own gaze in the back side window. Beside her Cooper casts a worried glance.

"Probably just tired, Agent Cooper. We can't blame her for that, can we?"

Sensation flutters along Cooper's hand, in the ridges that divide long fingers. He feels Audrey's hand trembling there and he squeezes his reassurance. He looks up and meets Ben's warning eyes, a reflection in an all too familiar mirror.

* * *

**Waterfall… **_**"safe"**_

Madeline Ferguson's body is a bloodied print in his mind's eye and Cooper isn't sure what he's doing anymore when he knocks on Audrey's door. It's the middle of this black, starless night but if death is anything it's indiscriminate. He needs to know she's okay.

She answers, still dressed in that orange sweater and black skirt. He swallows back something in his throat and tells her it's not safe.

"What's not safe?"

"Nothing. Everything. Audrey, do you trust me?"

"You know I do."

"Come with me."

She doesn't ask where. He needs to know she's okay. They walk a mile through darkness and emerge by the falls, a sliver of moon reflecting off cascading water. On the other side they'd found Madeline's body. Audrey is oblivious as she settles onto the damp ground. Beside her Cooper sits and their shoulders meet innocently. He doesn't sever the connection.

"I come here sometimes, to think," she says and softly tears apart their silence.

An embankment at the peak, trees parted and rocks like boulders shape a hidden sanctuary. Below them water falls to a steady rhythm.

"It's dangerous, Audrey," he speaks, voice ethereal.

She turns to laugh at him. "Well not if you don't get too close to the edge, silly."

"Not here," he explains gently, blinks, his face a ghostly mask of worry. "It's dangerous everywhere. I won't lose you."

She kisses him then, a quiet placation to seal all worry. "I'm not going anywhere."

Cooper feels heat prickle his skin despite the night's wintry climate. Audrey turns to admire the waterfall and the weight of her shoulder against his is reassurance enough.

* * *

**The Funeral of Leland Palmer… **_**"the world turns"**_

"Funerals, huh?"

Her voice, splintered, finds his attuned senses and he almost loses all sense. She's leaning against the back panels of the house, cigarette burning to ash between her fingers. She looks, head dipped, and her dark locks curl enchantingly across her eyes.

She notices he's looking at the cigarette. "I quit, you know. Just need something to do with my hands."

He's close now, hands pocketed and lips thinly spread. Eyes soft, searching. "Funerals are hard at the best of times. This one is particularly trying. I don't blame you, Audrey, for wanting some air."

She taps the cigarette, ash falls to meet damp grass. "We went skiing last year. Mr and Mrs Palmer, Laura. I saw Mr Palmer nearly every day my whole life. But I never knew him, you know. Kind of seems the whole town didn't either."

"We believe what we need to about a person."

"That's it?" Green-blue eyes flash, an ocular teenage pout. "We just believe what we want to believe?"

He looks calmly at her. "Were you thinking the world works some other way?"

"I'm sick of eating egg salad."

"I know what you mean."

* * *

**Milford Wedding… **_**"learning to dance"**_

Windom Earle has begun to play again. This weighs on Cooper's mind, itself a chessboard of innumerable pieces. But the pieces he's yet to learn how to play. _Let he who is without sin cast the first stone… _Sin is relative, but Cooper's learned that consequences follow closely their actions.

Agent Bryson beside him eyes the crowd like (s)he's looking for a (bride)groom to go with that bouquet, and Cooper himself feels it when Audrey steps into the room. She looks up through the crowd. Cooper knows she's looking for him and a knot twists his insides, but he doesn't mind the binding feeling. It brings new meaning to _guilty pleasure_.

The upbeat piano jazz beckons a dance to accompany its tune and so couples form around Mr and Mrs Milford.

Audrey finds Cooper and their eyes lock.

"Denise, if you'll excuse me…" Cooper pats a flat hand on Bryson's shoulder but his eyes never break with Audrey's as he moves towards her.

She smiles widely as they meet in the middle of the room. "Agent Cooper, may I have this dance?"

"Audrey," Cooper extends his arm, "it would be my absolute pleasure."

He keeps a deliberate distance between them, shielding her vulnerability with a gentlemanly hold of her hand and waist. He leads her though her steps are anything but ungraceful, and they move together to their own learned dance.

* * *

**Twin Peaks Savings and Loan… **_**"civil disobedience"**_

Chained to the vault, an unchartered act of defiance, Audrey imagines what Agent Cooper will say. She's asked Dell to call him, and she's making trouble but this time it's not to amuse herself.

"_Audrey, what do you imagine to accomplish by doing this?" _–or something like it.

Stop Ghostwood. That's the reason she's doing this, isn't it? The Sheriff's station could send an officer, but she'd asked for Agent Cooper. He'll come for her, surely. Because she asked for him.

She'd asked for him before, for something else entirely, but it's too late now. Would he know she's different?

Pete and the other man have found what they were looking for, and Audrey casts a tired glance their way. She hears—"It's a boy!"—from the other room and there's a kind of tick, but maybe there isn't and maybe she's imagined it because that's what she's seen in the movies before the bomb goes off.

Then the bomb goes off and she enters a coloured dream. There's a giant and a dwarf in a red room, and Agent Cooper is there and he looks at her but his eyes are white. She thinks she hears him laugh but the sound is muted, and then everything goes black and the dream ends.

* * *

**Room 315… **_**"who are you?"**_

The door opens and he lets her in, his expression blank. White shirt open, revealing a vertical strip of his sternum. She sees his bed unmade, sheets drawn low, and Audrey remembers seeing Annie not long ago in the lobby.

Her throat's dry when she speaks. "Sorry to disturb you, Agent Cooper—"

But Cooper turns from her and pushes a needle down on a record as unmelodic, chaotic jazz blares from the speaker. Quick as an animal to prey, he turns to her and holds her shoulders, pushing her to the wall. His mouth descends on hers viciously, steady against her feeble attempts to escape. She squeals against his lips and eventually manages to push hard enough against him so he stumbles back.

Instinct. She touches two fingers to her lips and they feel cold, like death had kissed her. There's delight in Cooper's eyes; Audrey thinks she sees them flash white. He grins at her and it's like her dream.

"What's the matter, Audrey? Not what you expected?" He corners her again, his face against her cheek. "You're not the pure little girl anymore, are you? You've had it taken from you. Coop never got close to it, never let himself. His mistake."

Audrey's heart drums hard and fast against her chest. "Who are you?"

She feels his hand grip her waist, fingers digging into her. "That won't stop me from killing you. Laura never went without a man's scent on her, and that didn't stop me."

He pushes his mouth against hers again but it lasts only a second before he's gone, the door swinging behind him. Audrey holds herself against the wall and cries out, her knees buckling fast and she collapses to the floor. She slips into unconsciousness and there a coloured dream tells her where she needs to go.

* * *

**The Black Lodge… **_**"save the one you love"**_

Tar pit. Killed the mammoth. It sunk, slower than in quicksand, lungs filled with black viscosity. It would have had time to think what was happening to it, to become panicked and desperate. The moment before death it would have felt so frightened it probably died from panic before reaching the bottom.

Audrey imagines pulling it out before it could die. Saving it.

She's bleeding but she knows it isn't real. Is any of it? This place with the red and white patterned floor, red drapes like an ocean made with blood.

Blood drips off her forehead onto her hands and she runs. The dwarf shuffles backwards to music only he can hear. Laura Palmer clicks her fingers and points down.

Her own father comes forth, cigar hanging from the side of his mouth as he rubs his hands together. "You shouldn't be playing here, Audrey. Run along like a good girl."

She runs into Cooper, blood from her forehead staining the collar of his shirt. She grasps his hand and they run. Circles. One room into the next back into the other into the next.

Tar pit. It catches Cooper and he sinks. He's talking but she can't hear him. Silent film. She's holding his hand and she pulls, pulls.

Pulls him out.

His body, prone in the dark woods, hers pressed against his. She touches her lips to his and his eyes flutter open.

"Save the one you love," she whispers in the dark, and Cooper smiles up at her.


End file.
